


When to Back Down

by Desiderii



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Dune-like, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desiderii/pseuds/Desiderii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Ava al'Latifh acquired her scar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When to Back Down

**Author's Note:**

> This character, Ava, is from Blood Rites (bloodrites.net). The Pruul there is based heavily on Dune, so this is a BJT/Dune crossover, more or less, and uses places, names, and tribes from Blood Rites.

Traveling days filled themselves with chaos and laughter with barely a rest for Ava to take even a sip of water. The whole tribe packed and loaded their homes onto sledge, horse, and camel, and made toward their destination just over the next dark horizon. Ava’s task for this move was to scout, valuable experience for her Ordeal the next year, and her little brother Sahkr had begged and pleaded to follow along behind. He was eleven, and rambunctious, but he’d been a warrior in training for five years and was making an effort not to slow her down.

Smoke caught her attention and she signaled her brother to follow, slowing her steps and pointing out the anomaly. It could be anyone out here between water-sources where the sand shifted and members of other tribes could just as easily be foe as friend. Sakhr, with his lighter build, flung himself up a dune and down the other side, hunting for a way to sneak up on the strange fire.

Ava narrowed her eyes as she watched him, falling behind with her heavier steps. She was wary of who they’d find, for this corridor was not supposed to have any camped along it. It was dusk, time for all travelers to begin their nightly journeys as the heat of the day returned to the soles and warded away the desert chill. Who would build a fire and, presumably, camp at night so close to the Latifh on their way to somewhere else?

Sakhr returned, Ava’s stealth lessons almost wholly ignored as half of the dune followed him down to where she took careful steps to the summit. “Ava!” He said, only realizing after that he should speak quietly so the sound would not carry over the sand. “Ava-” He repeated, cupping his hands around his mouth, his eyes wide. “Three warriors, a black kerchief and two yellow. At an outcropping, around a fire.”

Ava’s eyebrows shot up. “What would a Tabur be camping at night with two of our warriors for?” She asked, her brother’s wide eyes following her face in the darkness. He shook his head, but she hadn’t required an answer. There were plenty of reasons such a thing might occur, though she couldn’t not think of a particularly good one at the moment.

Cresting the dune, she slid down the far side with practiced grace and was rewarded by the sight of the three sitting around the campfire leaping to their feet in surprise. The campfire rested in the hollow of a windbreaking rockwall, half the height of a man but solid enough to keep a man safe from the sandworms. A good resting place, with shade, and a sensible location were it day. “Good job, Sakhr.” She complimented him, amused that even his terrible attempt at stealth had gone entirely unnoticed by these full-fledged warriors. He beamed up at her, barely a foot from her side as he shadowed her into the confrontation.

The greetings between them felt stiff and stilted, and the two warriors from her tribe looked uncomfortable that she had found them. The Tabur warrior, wrinkled and gray-haired, simply looked amused. “What brings you?” She asked.

The Tabur - a landen, she suddenly realized - replied, “These two pups promised to bring me safe to the Latifh camp, but the trip has been slow and they do not seem inclined to do more than drink and talk.”

“I hope you were not worried about speed, honored one.” Ava said, eying her tribesmates. It was obvious to her that they were shirking their responsibilities so not to have to help with the move. “The tribe is traveling tonight and you are but a few hours from the flank.”

“We only just now worry about our water supply.” The Tabur’s laid-back response put her more at ease. She nodded. “Then I - Ava - and my brother Sakhr would be glad to escort you the rest of the way. Our camp is no longer where my esteemed tribemates left it, though it would have been yesterday.”

The shorter of the Latifh’s bristled, “Are you implying that we have dawdled deliberately?”

“She didn’t say that out loud.” Sahkr came to Ava’s defense and she winced.

“Hush, Sahkr. I was not implying anything.” Ava said, taking the opportunity of direct address to judge the older warriors’ mettle. She recognized them. The short one had performed his Ordeals last year and was scarce seen in the camp since. She gathered he’d been courting a Kaid woman, or maybe a Tabur, judging by their company. The taller of the two was a quiet, broody fellow who she got along with reasonably well, though his Ordeal was only just passed and he’d not had time to have his khanjar crafted.

The shorter man - Kahil was his name - put a hand near his sword-belt. “We- I-” Kahil corrected himself when the taller man touched his elbow, “Always perform our duties to the best of our ability.”

Ava translated that as, ‘I am spoiling for a fight.’ She was slightly younger than Kahil and on the untried side of her Ordeals, but she knew she was good. Not, perhaps, as good as her brother might be when he grew, but good enough to beat this man handily. She had his measure. *We fight* Ava sent on a thread, *If you win, we pretend we never found you. I win, I escort you back and you honor your consequences.* She shifted her stance in preparation.

*Deal.* Kahil shot back. Aloud, he said, “You challenge my honor!”

With a twist of her wrists, Ava flicked out a pair of her long knives, the better to control the ebb and flow of the combat to come. She liked sparring, and while both were invested in winning, neither of them seemed particularly concerned with the outcome. Hopefully this would be an easy match and she could go about her business sooner rather than later. In her impatience, she rattled her knifes together to hurry Kahil up.

After she drew, he did, and the small group of spectators stilled. The tall warrior caught his breath, and the sound directed her attention to the weapon that Kahil brandished in her direction. His khanjar. It was far too serious a weapon for their spat, and she read the panic in his eyes as the Tabur stepped back to give them fighting room. A moment later, however, Kahil’s face hardened and he dropped into fighting stance.

A full warrior threatening a mere stripling with a blade that could only be resheathed once it had tasted of her blood? This was ridiculous, but he didn’t seem willing to cut his own thigh and admit the mistake. The aggression now in his stance was unmistakable. He wanted to make this quick and bloody. Where before he might lose face in a simple sparring ‘bout, here he might lose honor in the eyes of their pitiful audience.

Ava clacked her blades together in uncertainty. “Take out your knives. Make this fair.” She knew what she was asking and wasn’t surprised when his eyes narrowed and he spat upon the sand. At the waste of water, the Tabur raised his eyebrows in surprise, the first sign of an emotion other than amused detachment.

“No. Knives up. Unless you’d like to draw your denagi jar?” All of Kahil’s former shouts of honor and duty took on another dimension, seeming less the bravado of an arrogant youth, and more now the weak protests of an insufficient man. He flourished his khanjar and looked her in the eyes. Ava bared her teeth in return.

The fight began with circling. Ava shifted her grip on her left knife, flipping it down along her forearm and used it to block Kahil’s testing strikes before they went after each other in earnest. It gave her time to probe for weaknesses, though it gave her opponent the same opportunity. He favored his right-hand strike, and he telegraphed a powerful swing with a half-grunt. The Ordeals did not forge the warriors Ava had dreamt of joining if Kahil was any indication. 

Sahkr and the other warrior backed off as well, though Ava’s brother did not go far. He stood by the fire - his small body growing colder than the adults now that the sun was well and truly down. The only light to illuminate the fight was the flicker of the cookfire, its tendrils of white smoke now lost against the backdrop of a thousand thousand stars.

The shadows changed how the Ava and Kahil moved around each other, hiding twitches and tells in the darkness furthest from the fire. The thrust and parry of formal combat dissolved into an artless melee as Ava realized that Kahil was attempting to draw blood as quickly as possible, rather than win by any other means.

If it was blood he wanted-

Ava stepped under Kahil’s guard with a fluid spin, drawing each of her knives across his chest and biceps, leaving a thin score that stained his light clothing red as she stepped away. First blood - if those were the conditions of a win, she won. With a graceless hop backward, Kahil arched his body away from her cut and his khanjar completed the swing he had already begun.

Kahil’s heel slipped on a loose shard of stone, Ava misjudged the swing in the flickering firelight and only realized its true position when the blade caught starshine along its edge. She was too close, had missed his grunt of exertion, and had pushed too far toward his good side. Kahil, for his part, could no sooner stop his khanjar than he could ride a sandworm.

The blade parted Ava’s skin just below the ear and drew across her throat, leaving a deep striated wound in its wake, layers of muscle and fat visible for an instant before the blood began to flow. Once his khanjar was free of her flesh, Kahil staggered and dropped to one knee, panting and unaware of what he had done.

Every heartbeat began to count as Ava dropped her knives and bled into the sand. She grasped at her throat, fingers slick, and tried to calm the heart that leaped and panicked in her chest. She could not even cry out. Air whistled from the gap in her throat when she tried to form words and blood clogged her lungs when she struggled to fill her lungs.

“Aside.” The Tabur pushed her to the ground and placed his own hands on the wound. He pressed at her neck, though Ava could not feel that it was making any difference as she drowned with every gasp. “We cannot let you lose more blood.”

The world became a series of still images washed with too-bright firelight, her fellow warriors moving in stutter-stop motions. This must be what shock felt like, or the killing edge, or dying, where every breath registered on her senses and every small sound became crystal and clarion in her ears. Hellfire and Damnation - she’d give her firstborn for the ability to breathe.

Kahil turned to her, his face ashen as he now understood what she suffered. After one look, he averted his eyes and fell to his hands and knees. Ava might have laughed, but a sudden flame close to her face claimed attention.

“Let me to her!” Sakhr’s words found meaning at last, and she could see his shadow struggling to pass the Tabur as he leaned over her and accepted a burning brand from the tall warrior. “I can do something. I can use Craft. Let me- let me- you don’t-”

“Do you know how to stop the bleeding? Do you know to Heal, boy? I have seen injuries like this on the killing field before.” Heat drew close to her face. “When there are sandworms about, you seal the wound with fire.”

“I don’t- no- don’t! DUA. HEAR ME.”

Her brother’s words were the last she heard, his scream for their sister, before the pain redoubled and seared across her neck. Darkness claimed her for long enough that when she opened her eyes again, Sakhr filled her vision. “Sorry, sorry.”

Ava did not understand why he was apologizing when her death was not his fault, though she understood well enough a moment later when he shoved two fingers into her mouth and held onto her jaw. She gurgled in pain.

“Dua said to make sure you could breathe.” He said, young and scared and very determined as he shoved a bolt of Summer-Sky down her breathing passage, boiling away the blood that blocked her airway and burning her throat from the inside. She was never so glad to be hacking and sputtering in her entire life, forcing the fluids clogging her lungs up to where his Jewel burned them away.

Air. Mother night.

“Don’t die, Ava.” Sahkr said, almost too quiet for her to hear. Either that or the world had gone mushy as she slipped away. She wanted to reassure him, but she was far from certain she wouldn’t be demon-dead soon. He continued, “I can hold the blood in, but I can’t fix it.”

She stayed awake by sheer force of will, burning her Jewel to stay conscious, her brother by her side. Later, she swore that his presence was all that kept her from drifting into the Darkness until help arrived.


End file.
